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• Archive: Hi, my name is Jason Connell.Since 2005, I’ve toured the world as a professional speaker for Fortune 500 companies, elite conferences, colleges and universities, and even national governments.If you keep reading, I’ll show you exactly how I - and many of my students - have built very successful careers as speakers.I’ll also show you the mistakes that stop most people from ever getting there (more on that in a moment…)I Thought I Was Destined to Be a World Famous Speaker...When I was just 19 years old, I decided that I wanted to be a speaker.
• Not only that, I was SURE that I was going to be great.But there was just one small problem…Nobody knew who I was.And nobody wanted to hear what I had to say.
• (You’re probably already better off than I was.)Still, I was naive and optimistic.
• I thought that if I put up a website and made a few phone calls, then paid speaking gigs would start rolling in.I even fantasized about buying a luxury apartment, taking my friends out to fancy restaurants, and flying all around the world to give speeches.Unfortunately, that’s not quite what happened…For YEARS, I struggled to book any speaking engagements - and I almost gave up (several times)...When I first started, I spent 10 hours a day reaching out to speech buyers, researching conferences, chasing agents, trying to schedule meetings, and just trying to get one speech booked.But after the first couple of months, I was forced to confront a very uncomfortable truth: nobody was hiring me.Worse...nobody was even taking me seriously.My savings were running out, so I started cold-calling prospective clients.
• (My goal was 100 cold-calls per week.)However, I was so afraid of just picking up the phone, that I’d often spend the whole day procrastinating and making excuses without making even one call.Out of desperation, I started offering free speeches.